Sam Nicoresti on her Comedy Award winning show, Baby Doomer

“There’s no platonic ideal [of a skirt suit]. The quest for perfection never ends because it's an unachievable goal. That's actually the point of the show, not many people get that,” jokes Sam Nicoresti on her Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning show Baby Doomer. 

For someone on our radar for a while, it’s been a joy to see the comic’s rise. Previously a more multimedia-focused act, it’s safe to say Nicoresti smashed her first traditional Fringe hour: “I've not done a stand-up show before. So I did one. And it was the best one,” she laughs.

“When I first went to the Fringe I was watching a lot of Joe Morpurgo and Richard Gadd and really heavy concept, prop-based comedy. That to me was the epitome of a Fringe show.” Tim Key’s bath show (Masterslut) also proved formative, with Nicoresti only realising when planning her own show with a claw foot tub on stage. She saw Key perform while at uni in Sheffield and took a photo with him afterwards, fondly remembering it as “the dorkiest I've ever looked... Never meet your heroes, not because they'll let you down, but because you'll say something mad that'll haunt you forever.”

Wokeflake, Nicoresti’s previous show, was an underground hit at The 2022 Edinburgh Fringe and began to journal her coming out as trans. “I wanted to record that experience because I hadn't really seen that anywhere else... There's lots of really good trans media, films, art, about being in the scene and just living it, but I didn't have anything about people that were just like 'Oh I don't know, I've got a lot of self-doubt and hate around this.'”

Credit: Rebecca Need-Menear

The show has since gained more traction after it went on YouTube, and Nicoresti’s now getting her own taste of meeting fans after gigs. “Somebody sent me something a month or so ago where they'd done a drag performance based off Wokeflake where they were miming to bits of the show as a frog.” The show draws a comparison between trans people and frogs, for context. Another fan showed her a physical DVD cover they’d designed for Wokeflake, because it meant so much to them. “Stuff like that – that’s so fucking cool,” Nicoresti beams.

Baby Doomer is “the second part of a trans trilogy,” focusing on living as a trans woman and Sam’s quest to feel at home in her body. Think rites of passage for any woman, queer magic, and burning her trauma – all with more references to Sméagol than you’d anticipate. “It's that classic thing of confusing making a Fringe show about something with having dealt with the problem. I did a show about my love of clothes, I have not resolved my deeply capitalistic affiliation with my emotional wellbeing,” she pithily claims.

Self-criticism aside, the show was acclaimed and won the most revered award in live comedy. The impact of the win is “impossible to quantify. It's such a strange sentence to consider that 'Oh, I did that. I won that thing' that I've been following since I was fourteen.” It has certainly opened new doors for Nicoresti: a UK tour, an appearance on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and more exciting projects coming up, but she does question the personal toll of it all. “I think you go mad for a year, that's what I've been told. You become unbearable and insane for about 12 months and then hopefully you mellow out and become normal again, which is what I'm trying to fast-track, cos it's a total perspective vortex machine.”

As for its impact on trans comedians and the comedy scene, it’s less clear-cut. “I'm really proud to have got there, where Jordan Gray should have been in '22, it's like 'okay, for the team,'” and there’s a huge growth of trans comics and inclusive gigs, but Nicoresti is still doing gigs where “I feel either like a token or not really respected in what I'm doing.” To combat this, she’s organising trans charity fundraiser gigs and is teaming up with fellow trans pals and comics to produce a best practice guide for gigs and clubs.

“I think it's why gay men dominated cultural media in the 90s and beyond, because if you villainise a people, they will find a way of fighting back. Whether that be through protest or culture. We will come to dominate.” Nicoresti’s proudly doing both.

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Sam Nicoresti: Baby Doomer, Monkey Barrel, 12 Mar, 7.30pm; Old Hairdresser's Glasgow, 13 Mar, 7.30pm
@samnicoresti on Instagram
samnicoresti.com